Monday, September 08, 2014

An addendum on the debate about church music

In my comments about the debate between traditional and modern music in the church, I've tried my best to abstain from using one of the oldest arguments in the book; that modern music is too often doctrinally shallow and emotionally driven. More or less, I've seen it as a cheap shot.

Well, as a rule, I'll still hold off from using it, but it is worth noting that James MacDonald all but admits it in his book, "Vertical Church", as reviewed by Tim Challies. Keep it simple, repetitive, and emotionally driven, because all that doctrine of old hymns is like drinking from the fire hose.

OK, let's test that hypothesis by looking at the first verse of one of my favorites, "Amazing Grace."

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.

Now I can confess that we need to define grace, wretch, lost, found, blind, and seeing, and perhaps poetic language is a bit difficult in our prose-heavy society that considers Executive Order 13423 to be an essential part of learning literature, but for someone who can read at a 6th grade level, this should not be an insuperable challenge. It certainly does not require the gift of glossolalia.
In short, what we have here is a music ministry designed for people with at best a 4th grade reading level (Chicago Public Schools graduates I guess), and a preaching ministry that will not help congregants to understand these concepts. In other words, it's a church model designed to keep congregants in spiritual infancy--if even that.

So if your church is using Harvest Bible Chapel products to guide music or other ministries, you may want to ask some serious questions.